Author Archive

The 17th Food Colloids Conference is being held from 8th – 11th April 2018, at the University of Leeds, UK.

The subject area of the conference is physical chemistry of complex food systems with special emphasis on macromolecules that structure food. The aim is to expand knowledge on how interactions between food components create multi-phase structures on different length scales. Furthermore, the role of food processing and its influence on these interactions and structures shall be addressed. Another key area of the conference will be how fundamental knowledge can be used to better understand behaviour of food structures during oral and gastrointestinal processing and to create novel structures with the aim of delivering functionality in the multifarious sense of the word (e.g. nutrition, health, controlled release, texture and taste).

Themes

The main theme of this conference is ‘Application of Soft Matter Concepts’ and the following scientific sessions will cover a series of topics illustrating the interplay between fundamental colloid science research and more applied soft matter research.

Food Matters Live is the UK’s fastest growing cross-sector event showcasing innovation in the food and drink industry and it returns to London’s ExCeL from 21 – 23 November 2017. Register for free entry.

Food Matters Live is delighted to unveil the education programme for 2017…
Celebrated chef Heston Blumenthal, former Sainsbury’s CEO Justin King and neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield will head up an all-star cast of 400 speakers across 100 free-to-attend conference and seminar sessions at Food Matters Live 2017. Read more.

New highlights for 2017 include…

• The Awards – designed to celebrate inspiring innovation and creativity from across the food and drink industry.

• Match – a matchmaking service offering both exhibitors and visitors the opportunity to pre-arrange meetings onsite at Food Matters Live.

• Food futures seminars– These new seminars will focus on the innovative products, processes and new technologies shaping the future of food and drink production and business.

Join 800 exhibitors and 400 speakers at Food Matters Live 2017, providing you with everything you need to keep your business at the cutting edge of innovation, in an unmissable three-day event. Find out more www.foodmatterslive.com

The Atomic Force Microscopy and Food Workshop will be held from 9th – 10th November, 2017, in Auckland, New Zealand.

Immediately following DOF17 there will be a 1.5-day workshop at the University of Auckland on the use of Atomic Force Microscopy in food and nutrition research. The workshop aims to attract 20-30 participants across a broad range of research areas.

The main focus is to provide participants with practical experience of analysing food materials using the latest AFM techniques and equipment. In addition, participants will learn about recent progress in the field from leading international AFM experts working in the areas of foods, biomaterials, and soft matter systems.

The workshop will cater for beginners and AFM experts alike. We also anticipate involvement of advanced users seeking exposure to new analytical approaches.

The combination of high-res visualisation of ultrastructure with force measurement is the major impact of AFM. The potential of force spectroscopy to probe the specifics of receptor-ligand interactions at the single molecule level is promising. For example, factors such as bond lifetimes, distances, and the number and nature of the energy barriers involved in single receptor-ligand interactions, are all within the realm of AFM measurement. My presentation will include explanations of the fundamental aspects of AFM’s force spectroscopy and demonstrate the ability that this combination has successfully enabled exploration of structure-function relations in food science. It features several aspects; food material science, digestion, satiety, bioactivity and my most recent investigation of the role of the gut microbiome.

Biological semiflexible polymers and filaments such as collagen, fibronectin, actin, microtubules, coiled-coil proteins, DNA, siRNA, amyloid fibrils, etc. are ubiquitous in nature. In biology, these systems have a direct relation to critical processes ranging from the movement of actin or assembly of viruses at cellular interfaces, to the growth of amyloid plaques in neurodegenerative diseases. In technology and applied sciences, synthetic macromolecules or fibrous objects such as carbon nanotubes are involved in countless applications. Accessing their intrinsic properties at the single molecule level, such as their molecular conformations or intrinsic stiffness, is central to the understanding of these systems, their properties, and the design of related applications. In this talk I will discuss the features and potential of FiberApp in analyzing polymers, fibrils and filamentous objects. FiberApp is a new open-source tracking and analysis software based on a cascade of algorithms describing structural and topological features of objects characterized by a very high length-to-width aspect ratio, generally described as “fiber-like objects”.

Imaging challenges in bionanotechnology

Jenny Malmstrom, Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Auckland, New Zealand

In our research group we are interested in the interface between materials and biological systems – such as proteins and cells. Structured or organised surfaces with nanoscale features are important in a range of fields ranging from energy and computing to controlling cellular adhesion. The precise organisation of proteins at surfaces is one route to creating such engineered interfaces. Proteins exist with an enormous structural and chemical versatility and lend themselves well to be functionalized with different moieties. The ability to rationally engineer proteins enables the use of proteins as carefully designed nanometer sized building blocks.

I will present work from our group focussed on using protein-protein interactions to build up higher order structures, and in particular to order these structures. Proteins like Lsmα and peroxiredoxin self-assemble into robust doughnuts whose pore size can be tuned specifically to encapsulate metal complexes or nanoparticleand then assemble further into tunnels to create magnetic, electrical or optical nanorods. This work describes how we are harnessing this potential to create functional arrays of these self-assembling protein rings. We have explored ways of arranging these protein rings, for example through templating using a self-assembling block copolymer, or through specific binding to a patterned surface. Furthermore, the protein core has been used to template the synthesis of small (~3 nm) magnetic nanoparticles. Throughout all of this work, imaging is an important characterisation tool and I will show how we use AFM (including magnetic force microscopy) and other techniques to understand our systems.

Nanoindentation of hierarchical biological materials: from polysacchride gels to living cells

Gleb Yakubov, ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls, School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Australia

Atomic Force Microscopy is widely used to characterise the micromechanics of complex biological systems including cells. The attraction of using AFM for nanoindentation is its ability to measure very low forces and its operational versatility, as well as the potential to include in situ imaging. However, interpretation of force indentation curves may present a significant challenge especially for biological materials and systems that are heterogeneous and comprise a number of morphological features, each having a unique set of micromechanical properties.

Here, I present a novel Multi Regime Analysis (MRA) algorithm that tackles these challenges enabling deconvolution of highly complex force indentation profiles. The MRA approach combines both well established and semi-empirical theories of contact mechanics within a single framework. The fundamental finding is that each structural contribution to the mechanical response can be incorporated in series with other ‘mechanical resistors’ using a vector field of deformations mapped onto the experimental values of force. This simplification enables interpretation of the micromechanical properties of materials with hierarchical structures as well as automated processing of large data sets, which is particularly indispensable for biological systems.

Further, I will illustrate the applicability of MRA for characterising the micromechanics of a broad range of soft materials including plant cell and polysaccharide microgels. In particular, I will show the unique capability of MRA to map micromechanical properties and to evaluate elastic moduli of anisotropic materials with complex hierarchical structures.

Understanding the interactions between droplets of oil and gas bubbles is central to tuning the desired properties of foodstuffs such as ice cream and mousse, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, and in mineral flotation and separation. Fundamentally, the interaction between dissimilar fluid interfaces is an interesting problem, as they may charge and deform to different extents, and can potentially experience a range of exotic forces due to the composition of the intervening fluid.

We have developed new methods to use the atomic force microscope (AFM) to analyse collisions between pairs of bubbles and oil droplets – of around 100 microns diameter – in various conditions.1,2 From surfactant-free interfaces where the native charge of the air–water and oil–water interface can be examined, to complex fluids where the granularity of the background fluid creates hysteresis and structural forces, almost all combinations of soft colloid can be interrogated.

Crucially, by combining the data obtained from AFM with other techniques such as confocal microscopy and small-angle neutron scattering,3 a complete picture of the role of solution structure and droplet interacts can be obtained. Now we seek to delve further into the realms of macroscopic and microscopic rheology to better understand the relationships between the rarefied single interaction forces measured using AFM and the bulk properties of the complex and multicomponent fluids that are central to food processing.

Us and Them: Inhomogeneities in Polysaccharides and their Gels Studied by AFM

The emergence of patterning in biological systems is of fundamental interest. Here we first describe how the molecular patterning of a polysaccharide substrate influences its single molecule stretching behaviour and describe work designed to facilitate such AFM experiments by the end-tethering of species of interest. Secondly .we briefly review AFM work on the moduli mapping of plant tissues and describe our parallel studies on biomimetic gels that reveal large length-scale inhomogeneities in mechanical properties.

The DOF2017 symposium will be, as the previous DOF meetings, the primary platform for presenting new scientific developments in complex food systems, and their applications to food engineering design, food functionality and food consumption, the concepts of complexity and emergent phenomena in food science (introduced at DOF2015) and two new hot topics: replacements for animal-derived proteins; and effects of food structures on the microbiome of the human gut.

The topics for the scientific sessions are:

Novel structures for delivery of bioactives in foods

New and emerging processes and ingredients for delivering functionality

Intensively heating meat generates toxins such as benzene or polyaromatic hydrocarbons, which increase a person’s risk of developing cancer. Mingqian Tan, from Dalian Polytechnic University, wanted to find out whether heterocyclic amines, which are present in these types of toxins, react any further at the high temperatures typically found in barbecues to form carbon dots.

‘Scientists are aware of the presence of harmful toxins produced during food processing; however, our knowledge about their overall formation and potential toxicity is still insufficient,’ says Tan. ‘Carbon dots are harmful to human health due to their unique nano-effects, including their small size, high reactivity and phototoxic effects. We believe that these properties can cause damage to DNA and the cellular membranes,’ he adds.

There are 10 reasons why you have to attend IPC2017. The main topics of IPC2017:

Prebiotics – How does it work and how to develop a novel prebiotics. Human milk oligosaccharides as a prebiotics and immune modulator. How to get an approval for probiotics with health claims. Approaches to get approval from EFSA and other countries. How to identify functional probiotics. Development of novel screening system and evaluation procedure to identify functional probiotics. How probiotics work? Elucidation of underlying mechanism of actions. What are the effector molecules mediate health benefits of probiotics. How to identify and how to evaluate the functionality. How to characterize probiotic strains. Genetics, functional genomics of probiotic strains. How to formulate the probiotics to keep maximum effectiveness. Clinical trial of probiotics. What are the current statues of health benefit of probiotics in diverse disorders. Future probiotics. Novel function of probiotics.

IPC2017 offers the chance to meet a mixture of both leading scientists in the field and emerging young scientists. The conference’s many plenary, keynote and highlight speakers will be organised into thematically ordered sessions.

Functional bioactive peptides are an important constitute of functional foods. In addition to providing sources of amino acids for growth and maintenance, bioactive peptides have vast potential for improving human health and preventing chronic diseases through their impact on the gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, immune, and nervous systems. Our understanding with regard to preparing bioactive peptides from their parental proteins, absorption and bioavailability, metabolism, their mechanisms of action in the prevention of chronic diseases and promotion of human has made substantial progresses over the last three decades.

Purposes of the symposium:

-To discuss the newest developments and perspectives on bioactive peptide research

-To learn about the trends and opportunities in developing bioactive peptides products

-To network and develop collaborations and partnerships among the researchers, the academic and the industry participants

2) Zhejiang University & University of Alberta Food for Health Joint Research Center

3) Alliance of antibody-based novel drug research and industrialization, Zhejiang University

Themed Collection

Food Function is proud to be publishing an online themed collection to feature papers from the conference and to highlight the latest bioactive peptide research. The deadline for submission is 30th July, 2017. Please visit the journal website for more details about scope, or contact us if you have any questions.

Attracting over 300 attendees, the 11th meeting in the global series will build upon the success of last year’s highly acclaimed European meeting as well as our popular American and Asia forums to explore the interface between our evolving cultures, technologies and our microbiome through a series of interactive presentations and panel discussions with leading academics and industry experts as well as venture capital investors and leading solution, service and technology providers. The Global Engage series is rapidly gaining a fantastic reputation for fostering partnerships across academia, pharma and biotech. If looking to either learn more from the top scientists in the microbiome space; showcase exciting developments in your research; or seek partnerships and funding within the industry; it is an event not to be missed.

This is an ideal platform for progressing ground breaking microbiome research into commerical products. The 4th Microbiome R&D and Business Collaboration Congress: Europe offers countless opportunities to learn, network, invest and even find investors.

Attracting experts working in all areas of probiotics research, product development and business, the 2017 Probiotics Congress: Europe will explore the development of the next generation of probiotics, prebiotics and functional foods, and their impact on human health. The congress will feature a series of interactive presentations with leading academics and industry experts, panel discussions and an exhibition area allowing solution providers to highlight their products and services.

With an agenda aimed at not only increasing knowledge, but networking with peers and industry leaders. The Probiotics Congress: Europe is a valuable a part of the ever growing probiotics field. Make sure you don’t miss your chance to participate.

Following the success of Peer Review Week in September 2016 (dedicated to reviewer recognition) during which we published a list of our top reviewers, we are delighted to announce that we will continue to recognise the contribution that our reviewers make to the journal by announcing our Outstanding Reviewers each year.

We would like to highlight the Outstanding Reviewers for Food & Function in 2016, as selected by the editorial team, for their significant contribution to the journal. The reviewers have been chosen based on the number, timeliness and quality of the reports completed over the last 12 months.

We would like to say a big thank you to those individuals listed here as well as to all of the reviewers that have supported the journal. Each Outstanding Reviewer will receive a certificate to give recognition for their significant contribution.

We would also like to thank the Food & Function board and the food research community for their continued support of the journal, as authors, reviewers and readers.If you would like to become a reviewer for our journal, just email us with details of your research interests and an up-to-date CV or résumé. You can find more details in our author and reviewer resource centre